Abstract

The novel phenomenon of chiraltunneling in metallic single-wall carbon nanotubes is considered. It is induced by the interplay of electrostatic and pseudomagnetic effects in electron scattering in chiralnanotubes and is characterized by an oscillatory dependence of the electron transmission probability on the nanotubechiral angle and the strength of the scattering potential. The appearance of a special (Aharonov–Bohm-like) phase in chiraltunneling affects various phase-coherent phenomena in nanostructures. We examine chiral effects in: (i) persistent currents in circular nanotubes, (ii) Josephson currents in nanotube-based SNS junctions, and (iii) resonant electron tunneling through chiral nanotube-based quantum dots.

We gratefully acknowledge discussions with L. Gorelik, A. Kadigrobov, S. Kulinich and V. Shumeiko. AVP thanks V.Yu. Monarkha for help with numerical calculations. This work was supported in part by the Swedish VR, the European Commission (FP7-ICT-2007-C; proj. No. 225955 STELE), and the Korean WCU program funded by MEST through KOSEF (R31-2008-000-10057-0). The research of ENB and UL was supported by the US Department of Energy under Grant No. FG05-86ER45234. IVK acknowledges the hospitality of the Department of Physics at the University of Gothenburg.